


It's basically the world's least helpful therapy session

by MrBurner



Category: Lackadaisy (Webcomic)
Genre: Cat Ears, Gen, I ACTUALLY DESCRIBED HIS EARS AT ONE POINT WOW CATS ARE FUN TO WRITE ABOUT, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 02:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19758898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrBurner/pseuds/MrBurner
Summary: Time for a TALK





	It's basically the world's least helpful therapy session

He shows up at her door. She’s surprised when she sees him through the peep-hole but sedate by the time she loosens the latch. You don’t go around letting people see that they’ve surprised you, especially not when they probably want to kill you. 

The gun’s in the pocket of her silk dressing gown. She wraps a shawl around her waist to hide it, knowing he’ll write it off as her being chic. Knowing how the nasty little man likes to scoff at her, at her voice, at her clothes.

And if he does guess? At least she’ll be armed. 

He glowers at her through the crack in the door. Serafine smiles lazily back. He’s angry, he’s always angry. That’s useful. Makes twisting him easy. 

“You here to kill us, cher? Only askin’ since Nicodeme ain’t in. You wait till later, you can get us both at once. Know you like to be neat.”

It’s an easy dig. It still works. He doesn’t like to have his ways noticed, and even less so criticised. But she’s seen him straighten the collar on a cadaver and that’s too good to ignore. Now Heller looks like he wants to spit on her. Serafine can live with that. She’s had worse. But he won’t. He’s too tidy. 

“I don’t care about your idiot brother.” Heller says. His voice is low, trying to be serious. She’s not convinced. She can hear the tension in his throat.

She fakes offence. “Hey now, don’t be goin after him. Man’s no here to defend himself.”

He rolls his eyes. “Please. I sincerely doubt that it’s anything you haven’t heard before.”

“Still bad form, petite.” Now she’s got a sense for the temperature between them she knows he’s not here to kill her. Heller’s a lot of things. Subtle isn’t one of them. Feeling safe, Serafine opens the door. “So if it ain’t to kill us… oh my, is this a social call? And here I am without my face on.” She gestured to her hair- loose- and her clothes- a night dress. It’s flirtatious, just enough for Heller to widen his eyes, for the muscles in his jaw to tighten. 

Good. No matter why he’s here, she’s better off with him unbalanced. 

“I need to know.” He says like every syllable is painful, “How you found out about me.”

Ah, so it’s like that. She’s not surprised. She could count the men who haven’t underestimated her on one hand. Heller’s no different from the rest of them. 

Serafine doesn’t hold it against him. Not really. She’s used to it. Decides to let his smug superiority go eat itself.

“Bayou magic. Makes you wise, petite. Whispers things from the shadows.” She sharpens her smile. “Unless you think our mutual employer got loose lips. But you loyal. You’d never suggest that.”

“Oh, stop.” Another eye roll. There’s a lot in Heller that’s childish. It would be endearing, if she were fourteen. “I know he didn’t tell you. He doesn’t know. And it definitely wasn’t some voodoo nonsense.”

“You insultin a lot of things you don’t understand. Medicine. Ancient knowhow. Secrets.”

“‘Medicine’.” He scoffs, but there was a genuine anger behind it. “Is that what you think you did to me?”

Now he was getting boring. Serafine sighed. “Yes. So rude of me. Don’t be pathetic, petite. You speak my language, you know I couldn’t let you walk away. No with the whole congregation watchin’.”

His ears flattened slightly. He doesn’t have an argument for that. Instead he retreats back to his last point. 

“Nobody told you. Atlas- ”, he cuts himself off and she sees something flicker over his face, “Mr May. He didn’t tell anyone.”

Oh. So his trust is still with the dead man. Still boring. Serafine very much wants Heller gone. “Maybe you think too much of ‘Mr May’. He in the ground for a reason.”

And that gets to him, she sees the rage rise in his eyes. She’s on the edge of being worried again, but then something unexpected. He lets out a deep breath and pushes the anger down. 

She hadn’t thought he was capable of that. He’s so tightly wound, so easily set off, she’d assumed a spark would inevitably lead to a fire. But no. Restraint. Some sort of maturity afterall. 

When he wants something anyway. 

“You… I don’t know. Worked it out. Saw something.” He looks away, then back at her. “In me. What was it?”

And that’s a surprise. 

He didn’t think it was an information leak. He didn’t think it was down to her bluntly beating it out of some low level punk

This was…

She wouldn’t exaggerate. He’d earned an inch, she’d give him an inch. 

This was respect. 

(Of a sort. As much as he respected anyone who wasn’t Atlas damn May.)

She’s looking too hard at him and catches herself. Catches him looking back at her with that strained, tight expression he wears when she and Nico pluck too hard on his strings. Serafine makes a decision.

“You come inside.” She said, stepping back and giving him space to follow. It’s 60/40 whether he will or not, but after a moment he does. In retrospect, of course he does: refusing would be losing and he’s too petty for that. 

The room’s much the same as it was when he last visited. Darker, lit mainly by the morning light cracking in through the curtains, and emptier. But the improvements she and Nico made are still there. Hanging baskets. Silk sheets on the walls. The whole set dressed for that night’s ceremony. 

Knowing that Heller won’t, she reaches back and closes the door. The gesture scares his shoulders tense and she can’t stop herself from playing with that. “You safe, petite. Got enough of your blood last time.”

He makes a sniffing noise, more embarrassed than scared. She smiles, not looking at him. There’s overpriced room service coffee, still warm. Serafine serves him some. “‘Sides, you not the sort of man to let anyone touch you less you want them to.”

And that really gets him. Because if she’s wrong, they overpowered him. And if he let her, well, that was worse. That meant that the scar on his chest was there willingly. 

“You haven’t told me.” He’s trying to get the conversation back to the Question and Answer session he’d come for. “If I have a tell I want to know.”

“You find the weakness you can stop it? That how it is?” 

“I suppose.” She can feel him standing stiffly behind her. When she turns she knows exactly how close is too close and makes sure she’s there. He backs up a step before he’s even spotted the cup in her hand. 

“Coffee, Cher?” 

It’s another challenge. He can’t start backing down now, so he takes it. Eyes it warily.

“Black. How you like it.” This is his reward, a little kernel of truth. “An you like it black because you had some money, not much. Enough. You lost it. You had cream an sugar as a boy but you came to Atlas poor. If you changed back how you took, well, that’d be a weakness too.”

He looks up at her, over the cup. "We didn't have money." 

"I said 'enough'. Relative term. You had a roof." 

He seemed to concede the point. 

“Being willing to change’s a weakness.” She adds. It’s not necessary. He already knows. “But being able to change is a strength.”

And after a moment, he sips. She can’t quite make out his expression, but she knows he’s thinking.

“The train.” He says, abruptly. 

“You ramblin’ on me?”

“I mean. You mentioned the train.” His voice sharpens like he’s just remembered to be annoyed. “When you paraded me around for your congregation.”

Ah, he’s testing her. But fine. She’ll indulge him. Serafine scoffs. “You ain’t from here. How else’s a down on his luck ne’er do well gonna travel? Gonna have a chance to bump elbows wi Atlas May? Jus logic.”

“So you read people. Just like that.” 

“No ‘jus like that’.” She’s a hedonist. Suddenly she has an urge to tell him a little more. Maybe it’s just self satisfaction, winning one over on the smug little man. But then…for all his surface rudeness, for all his puffed-chest strength, he’s listening. Thinking about what she says. A woman can appreciate that. 

And maybe it’s the third option, the knowledge that their last attempt to worm their way into him failed. That’d be most practical. But she can’t quite convince herself of it, not as the only reason.

“You Jewish.” She remarks. Heller makes an unimpressed noise.

“That’s hardly a secret.”

“Non, but it’s no the point either. You Jewish. I’m ‘exotic’.” She smirks under that word. She’s heard it a lot, so many times it’s lost the sting it used to have. “Cajun, outsider before I even born, an bein orphaned never helped anyone. You come into the world wi no power, you learn to read those who do. Use them. Anyone could do it, if they had the inclination.”

“We don’t all manipulate our way through life.”

“Non.” She says again. “But you on the outskirts too. You know you gotta be smart. We all know you Jewish now, but how long did you keep it secret? How long till you know it safe? Maybe not ‘manipulation’, but it somethin’ like it.”

“I disagree. Manipulation is deliberate. Like lying to a gaggle of idiots about having magic powers.” He’s sneering. He wants her to rise to it, but she won’t. 

“Ain’t ever said I had magic powers.” She drinks her own coffee, ignoring his burning eyes. “My church lets a few wanderers feel at home. Nothin’ wrong with that.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“They do.”

“And they offer donations, I take it?”

“Churches accept charity.”

He scoffs. “Fine. I don’t care if you talk them into daylight robbery. I’m just- I’m insulted that you thought you could lure me into it.”

He’s not ‘just’ that. He’s wondering why she tried, what about him said he would make a good target. Serafine thinks and decides again that she’ll share something. Again she’s not really sure why, but she doesn't pull too hard on the thought. Her instincts are good. 

“Two reasons, cher. One.” Without offering him a seat she takes the sofa for herself. “Simple. Intimidation. You think me and Nico are time wasters. Idiots. Backwater crocodiles with one thought between us. May as well be crocs wi teeth, no?” 

From his expression she knows she’s right. No, she’d known she was right anyway.

“Two.” Now she gestures to the other chair. Not the one he’d had before. This was low, padded. Comfy. His eyes narrowed but when she stayed quiet, he sat. 

“Two?”

“Wasn’t all a lie.” He starts to scoff and she gets in first. “No, no. Mordecai.” 

It’s using his name that keeps him silenced. They both know it means something.

“You think what you want of the voodoo an the diable.” She lets herself exchange a brief, narrow, smile with him. “But accept this. We all been on the one road. Nico. You. Me. I couldn’t read you so well if we didn’t have that in common.” 

He doesn’t challenge that. It’s a little pompous of him, believing her criticisms of herself, but it’s true too. She’s not a damn magician. 

“Me and Nico,” Serafine sat back a little so she could see him properly, “we take what’s happened and we wear it. We wear the roles the world’s given us. Like armour. Make ourselves strong. Make ourselves powerful. An sure, for now we tethered together with your Marigolds. But it’s no permanent. We don’t need it to be. We not lost any more. You…”

At that he looks up, meets her eyes. There’s a flash of something there. Desperation. Need. He looks very young. 

“You do need it.” She finishes, and feels a stab of guilt. But it’s not a lie. Maybe it’s even a truth he needs to hear, though she’d be kidding herself if she believed that’s why she said it. And Serafine doesn’t lie. Not in her own head. 

He puts his coffee cup onto the table. His eyes have narrowed again, but there’s still a change in him. “Why?” He asks. He’s still listening to her then. 

“Lot’sa reasons. You alone. You don’t trust yourself. You don’t know what you want.”

That last one hangs in the air. 

“I been there. It’s not why you try to control the lil things.” Serafine lowers her voice. “But it makes that control all the more… appealin’.”

Another flicker on his face. She can’t read it. 

“... I’ll.” He picks himself up. “I’ll see you tonight. We have a job.”

“I remember.” 

“Good.” His eyes are still shifty as he makes his way out, as she lets him open the door himself. There’s a brisk flash of warm hotel light before it closes again. 

Mordecai glances back as he leaves. 

And Serafine’s alone. Again. Comfortably alone. 

She considers the talk, considers the man who came to see her. It’s the same question as it was with the scar. Either he wanted it, or he didn’t. 

Which would be worse?

**Author's Note:**

> SO Serafine is a really interesting character to me. Basically this whole thing comes from one piece of concept art from Tracyjb on deviantart where she was described as more of a poseur than a true believer. It's an interesting jumping off point for characterisation which will almost certainly eventually be proven as non-canonical.  
> Mordecai is here because he's great and because we actually know more about him than we do a lot of the Lackadaisy folks. So he sort of makes exploring her easier? Also their back and forth is kind of fascinating. And in case anyone thinks I think it's okay to scar someone up, no it very much is not. But the comic cut over the event itself in a way that feels like it's meant to be SOMEWHAT ambiguous, especially given the whole 'ghost gator' on the next page. Also Serafine and Mordecai both suck as people and have killed MANY OTHERS so really I feel like that puts everything else in a weird place morally. 
> 
> Also it would be remiss of me not to say that I am a white Scottish person. I have no idea how to write in a Cajun accent, and I apologise for butchering it. If anyone has suggestions or improvements I'll make them. And race in a cat-person world is obviously a weird subject, but Serafine's coded as not white (and drawn that way when we see them as human) so I feel like it's okay to put a little of that in the story. But again. White person. I am idiot. If anything I've done here hurts anyone get in touch and I can tag/change the content appropriately.


End file.
